Abstract
Diatom analyses of sediment cores extracted from three lakes in coastal southeastern South Australia reveal that, for most of the mid-late Holocene, they were shallow, brackish to saline systems with limited flow of water from continental sources. The construction of a substantial network of drains in the early years of settlement, to maximise transportation and agricultural production through wet winters, lead to abrupt freshening of the lakes. Interestingly, despite substantial nutrient loads to Lake Bonney SE (there are two Lakes Bonney and Frome in South Australia, which is why the lakes in the southeast of the state are differentiated with ‘SE’) associated with the commissioning and expansion of pulp and paper mills, a wastewater treatment plant discharge and agricultural runoff, there is only moderate evidence of nutrient enrichment in the lake, possibly because the post-impact assemblages are dominated by taxa with broad ecological preferences. Despite being preserved within a conservation park, eutrophication associated with agriculture is evident in the diatom assemblages of Lake Frome SE, which has a catchment more than twice that of Lake Bonney SE. Mullins Swamp, on the other hand, supports few indicators of eutrophic conditions. The freshening of these lakes is against the tide of salinisation from rising saline groundwaters in most wetlands across southeastern Australia.
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Acknowledgements
Dr. Frances Williams and Professor John Prescott undertook OSL analyses. Dr. Fiona Petchey, Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory, University of Waikato (NZ), provided the AMS-14C ages. Kimberly-Clark Australia supported the project in collaboration with the EPA (SA). Cameron Barr, Asta Cox, Fiona Little, Brendan Walsh and Craig McVeigh assisted with fieldwork. Chris Crothers drafted Figure 1.
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Haynes, D., Gell, P., Tibby, J. et al. Against the tide: the freshening of naturally saline coastal lakes, southeastern South Australia. Hydrobiologia 591, 165–183 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-007-0802-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-007-0802-7